Leaf area index (LAI) quantified the density of vegetation irrespective of land cover. LAI quantifies the total foliage surface area per ground surface area. LAI has been identified by the Global Climate Observing System as an essential climate variable required for ecosystem, weather and climate modelling and monitoring. This product consists of a national scale coverage (Canada) of monthly maps of the maximum LAI during a growing season (May-June-july-August-September) at 20m.
References:
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Richard Fernandes, Luke Brown, Francis Canisius, Jadu Dash, Liming He, Gang Hong, Lucy Huang, Nhu Quynh Le, Camryn MacDougall, Courtney Meier, Patrick Osei Darko, Hemit Shah, Lynsay Spafford, Lixin Sun, 2023.
Validation of Simplified Level 2 Prototype Processor Sentinel-2 fraction of canopy cover, fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation and leaf area index products over North American forests,
Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 293, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2023.113600.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425723001517